Yet between
these corresponding groups of islands, constructed, as it were,
after the same pattern, subjected to the same climate, and bathed by
the same oceans, there exists the greatest possible contrast, when
we compare their animal productions. Nowhere does the ancient
doctrine--that differences or similarities in the various forms of
life that inhabit different countries are due to corresponding
physical differences or similarities in the countries themselves--
meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction. Borneo and New
Guinea, as alike physically as two distinct countries can be, are
zoologically as wide as the poles asunder; while Australia, with its
dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts and its temperate
climate, yet produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely related
to those inhabiting the hot, damp, luxuriant forests which
everywhere clothe the plains and mountains of New Guinea.' That is,
we have like living things in the most dissimilar situations, and
unlike living things in the most similar ones. And though some of
Mr. Wallace's speculations on ethnology may be doubtful, no one
doubts that in the archipelago he has studied so well, as often
elsewhere in the world, though rarely with such marked emphasis, we
find like men in contrasted places, and unlike men in resembling
places.
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